


i'm a bubble in a sound wave, a sonic push for energy

by dizzyondreams



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Whiplash AU, drummer eren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 17:06:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6915799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzyondreams/pseuds/dizzyondreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The quiet never lasts; Eren’s mind doesn’t slow. Before long he’s at it again, drumming away into the night. Sweating and grimacing and bleeding but still moving, still trying to settle. It thrums under his skin like a live wire, and Jean imagines he could shock himself on it when Eren’s like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm a bubble in a sound wave, a sonic push for energy

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted to tumblr @ girlshinji but i decided i wanted to keep it here! inspired after i watched whiplash for the first time (a HUGE inspo for me as a film)

Eren Jaeger is a cacophony.

He is a beat, off kilter with the rest of the world. A ball of kinetic energy marching, _racing_ to the beat of some unknown drum. A whirlwind of dissonance in Jean Kirschtein’s otherwise peaceful, uneventful life.

Talking with his hands, voice racing off to some point unknown to even him. Mind sprinting faster than his mouth, his lips, his teeth can catch up with. Gestures a blur as he motions with hands bandaged and still bleeding from his nightly drumming session.

Jean likes to trace along his hands in their moments of quiet. The stillness of the room slowing his movements. A quietness that blurs his thoughts, so thick and muffling around his brain he almost wishes Eren would start speaking again.

His eyelashes flutter against his cheekbones, one corner of his mouth curled up as Jean skims his index finger over his knuckles. Broad hands, strong, callused and bleeding and scabbed. Ugly, but the most beautiful hands Jean has ever seen. Scars on the knuckles from fighting, on the joints of his fingers, the crook of his thumb and index, rubbed raw from his drumsticks. A small crescent shaped scar on the back of his hand, an injury unknown to Jean. He touches all of it, feather-light brushes across the wrecked skin.

Eren is soft like this, pliable and warm and gentle. He skims a finger across Jean’s cheekbone, the rasp of his plaster against the skin shockingly loud in the silence. Jean lets the quiet pack into his ears like cotton wool, lets Eren brush a fingertip across his lips. He tastes like salt, and iron, and Jean wants to eat him whole.

The quiet never lasts; Eren’s mind doesn’t slow. Before long he’s at it again, drumming away into the night. Sweating and grimacing and bleeding but still moving, still trying to settle. It thrums under his skin like a live wire, and Jean imagines he could shock himself on it when Eren’s like this.

This is how Eren copes.

When his mind won’t still, when all he wants is to get pushed to the concrete and to push back, when he’s angry or sad or just plain bored. Runs himself ragged until he can barely lift himself from drum stool to bed, leaving bloody handprints on the set, on the sheets. Jean bandages his hands for him, Eren staring down at the space between their feet blankly, like it may hold some secret to the universe. He doesn’t thank him, and Jean doesn’t want him to.

In return, Eren cooks for him. He makes him coffee and plies him with spicy Turkish food that makes Jean’s eyes water. Eren’s hands shake as he pours the water, and Jean’s just waiting for the day he drops the mug as he brings it to the table, give him something else to wreck himself over.

But Jean finds himself hating the silence more and more. Without the white noise of drumming, finger tapping, humming under breath, he can’t settle. He listens to jazz when he’s alone, anything to stop the silence creeping in. Anything to stop the ticking of the clock, the hum of the fridge, the terrible _loneliness_ of his flat a mile from where Eren is shedding blood, sweat and tears (quite literally) over the beat up drum set in his basement flat.

It was the only room they’d give him, after he told them he liked to drum. He still gets noise complaints from above, but less after he threatened to punch the guy from the flat above, talking fast and rapid about how he was ‘killing his artistic spirit, man’.

After the dead quiet of Jean’s flat, the silence of Eren’s is a completely different creature. It’s the deafening lack of noise when Eren dunks his ripped up hands in the pitcher of ice-water he so conscientiously puts out for himself. The cool balm that wraps around Jean’s skull when Eren peeks up at him through his hair and asks:

“Man, d’you think you can run down to the store? I’m all outta plasters.”

It turns out, Jean isn’t as fond of silence as he’d thought he was.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading! title from one beat by sleater-kinney


End file.
